Tell Me Who I Am

by Julia Navarro

  It was after four o’clock when we got back to the hotel. Avi was as friendly and communicative as he had been the night before.

  “Do you know where to carry on looking?” he asked.

  “No, not really; perhaps Major Hurley will be able to reveal what he has in his archives about Amelia.”

  I told him who Major Hurley was and how he had helped me up to the present moment.

  “In my opinion, if your great-grandmother worked for the British during the war, then they might have given her more work... if she survived, of course. I have a friend, an American although he’s of German origin. He’s a historian, and he knows everything about what happened after the war. He wanted to fight, but they wouldn’t let him enlist because he was not old enough, and when he was old enough, then the war had finished, but even so he managed to get them to send him to Berlin. He felt indignant that Hitler and his filth had tarnished the name of Germany. He used to say: ‘Avi, it’s Hitler’s fault that everyone now thinks of Germans as being the same as him; it’s like original sin for Germans.’ He was born in New York but his parents were German, and he was brought up along German lines. He was a Catholic, and a devout one; so much so that he became a priest. He was already a priest when I met him in Jerusalem, where he lived for a while and got a doctorate in Biblical theology from the university there. We became close friends, and he used to tell me lots of things about Berlin that he found out when he arrived there in 1946. If you want me to, I could call him, he might be able to help you; but he lives in New York and I don’t know if...”

  “I’d be very grateful. Avi, I need whatever help I can get, someone to tell me what to do; so, if you talk to him and tell him who I am... Maybe I could use his advice.”

  We said goodbye at the hotel and he promised that he’d call me when he’d spoken to his friend, the American priest.

  I booked a ticket to return to London the next day, and took advantage of the time I had left to look around Jerusalem. Avi had recommended that I enter the old town through the Gate of Damascus, and that is what I did. I walked around, guiding myself with the plan I had brought with me; I bought an olive-wood rosary for my mother, and a Bible with covers of the same material. Then I bought several kufiyyat, Palestinian scarfs, to give out to my friends, and I don’t know why, but I let an old trader haggle with me for a burnished copper teapot. I didn’t like it very much, but I couldn’t resist the entreaties of the old man. I went back to the hotel satisfied with my purchases.

  I think that Major William Hurley would have liked for me to have spent more time in Jerusalem, because when I called him and told him I was in London, he did not seem very happy.

  “You do everything far too fast, Guillermo,” he reproached me.

  “I was just very lucky and met with the right people, which stopped me from wasting my time,” I defended myself, thinking that if Major Hurley weren’t so rigid and had decided to let me know once and for all everything that he knew about Amelia Garayoa, then I could finish my work and he wouldn’t have to put up with me anymore. But he was British and well-off, so it was only natural that he should have such a phlegmatic nature.

  “Well, what have you found out?” he asked me, as if whether he agreed to see me depended on this.

  When I had finished telling him there was silence on the end of the line for a while, but then he told me to wait until he got back in touch with me.

  “And when will that be, Major?”

  “In a day or so,” he replied, and then hung up.

  As he was a mature gentleman, he waited until the absolute limit, that is to say, he called me fully two days later, when I was already thinking about going to New York to see Avi’s friend, more than anything else because it was eating away at me not to have anything to do. Before he rung off this time, he said:

  “Lady Victoria has been kind enough to invite us to luncheon at her house tomorrow. At midday.”

  I celebrated this piece of news by treating myself to a meal in a restaurant. I liked Lady Victoria; just like the major, she was genuinely British. The fact that she was married to one of Lord Paul James’s grandsons, and that Lord Paul James was Albert James’s uncle, converted her into an expert on everything related to Amelia Garayoa.

  I bought a bottle of the best port in a Bond Street off-license. The salesman looked as if he wondered if he should serve me or call security, because I didn’t look very like one of his usual distinguished clients. I didn’t understand why he had stared at me so mistrustfully until I got back to the hotel and realized that I was wearing a Palestinian scarf round my neck. At the very least, he must have thought that I was bin Laden’s cousin.

  I was tempted to buy a tie in one of the exclusive Bond Street shops, as I owned only one tie and it was the one I always wore to see Lady Victoria, but the prices made me abandon my good intention; there was no tie that cost less than three hundred euros, so I decided that the money was better spent on Scotch whisky.

  It was twelve on the dot when I arrived. It seemed to me that Lady Victoria had more freckles than usual, and her alabaster-white skin was reddened, as if she had caught the sun.

  “Ah, dear Guillermo! How pleasant to see you again!” Her warm welcome seemed sincere.

  “You can’t know how grateful I am for your invitation,” I replied, trying to reach her level.

  “Your research is exciting, truly exciting. My husband thinks the same as I do, don’t you, dear?”

  Lord Richard agreed and held out his hand. His nose was red, I don’t know if it was because he, like his wife, had caught the sun, or if it was a consequence of his liking for sherry.

  I regretted my wicked thoughts. Lady Victoria and Lord Richard had spent a few days on holiday in Barbados, at a friend’s house, and that explained the reddened skin.

  I knew that before Lady Victoria and Major Hurley decided to get to the point, we would have to talk about generalities, and that it wouldn’t be until we got to dessert that they would get to work, so I decided, possessing my soul in patience, to enjoy lunch.

  “My dear Guillermo, we have had a stroke of luck; I was horrified when Major Hurley told me what you had discovered in Jerusalem... I thought of the suffering of all those poor women... But we have had a stroke of luck. Look, I’ve found one of Albert James’s notebooks in the archives, personal reflections that he wrote at the end of the war, about the surrender, the division of Berlin and also his meeting with Amelia. Imagine the moment! I remember having skimmed these notebooks, but there is still so much to catalogue! So I set myself to looking for them; I remembered that Albert had made reference to Amelia, although I didn’t know why. I think that with these notebooks, and with what Major Hurley can tell us, we can have some idea of what happened to your great-grandmother after the war.”

  “You may still need other sources,” Major Hurley said.

  “You are both helping me a great deal and I am very grateful,” I said, with my best smile.

  Lady Victoria and Major Hurley exchanged a quick glance and he let our hostess start to tell the story.

  You need to know that Albert James began to work for the American secret service. Lord Paul could not get his nephew to work with the British intelligence services, but a good friend of Lord Paul’s, William Donovan, an important lawyer and a veteran of the First World War, managed where Lord Paul had failed. Donovan had been charged by President Roosevelt with organizing a network of spies for the course of the war that would work closely with British intelligence.

  Donovan convinced the best of the best to join American intelligence, and Albert was one of them, although he didn’t join until well into 1943. His romantic idea of what a journalist should do prevented him from taking the necessary step until he realized that in this war it was impossible to be neutral, that one had to choose sides.

  Because of his knowledge of French, he was assigned to France and Belgium. He had lived for many years as a correspondent in Paris, and he had good contacts. He also worked in
Holland.

  When the war came to an end, Donovan sent him to Berlin. He knew that this city was where a “new war” was going to start, a silent and never openly declared war with their old allies the Soviet Union. So Albert was set up in Berlin under cover of being a journalist. This was where he met Amelia a little later; in his notebooks it says that he met her in November 1945, a few months after the end of the war.

  Amelia was walking with a child holding her hand. It was difficult for him to recognize her at first. She had always been thin, but now she was painfully so.

  “Amelia!”

  She turned to hear her name, and seemed not to recognize him immediately. Then she stood still waiting for him to come up to her.

  “Albert... I’m pleased to see you,” she said, holding out a hand.

  “So am I. What are you doing here?”

  “I live here,” she replied.

  “Here in Berlin? Since when?”

  “Always asking questions...” Amelia smiled.

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t want to bother you. I asked after you on several occasions in London, my uncle Lord Paul didn’t want to be very clear, so I couldn’t find out what had happened to you since... well, since we separated.”

  “I survived, which is much more than a lot of others can say. But tell me, where have you been? I suppose that you’ve been telling your American readers about the war, or am I wrong?”

  “No, you’re not wrong, I’m still in the same business, you know me. And this child?” he asked, pointing at the little boy who was the silent witness to this encounter.

  “Friedrich, say hello to my friend. He’s Max’s son.”

  They were silent without knowing what to say. As well as the war, it was Max von Schumann who stood between them.

  “So he survived as well. I’m pleased for the pair of you,” he said without much conviction.

  “Yes, he survived. Do you want to see him? He’d like to talk to someone who can remember the good times.”

  Albert felt very little urge to talk to Baron Max von Schumann, but he didn’t dare say no.

  “Come with us, we live nearby, a couple of streets further down, in the Soviet sector.”

  “Not the best spot.”

  “It’s the only building that Max owns which is still standing. It belonged to his family, they rented it out as apartments; now we live in one of them, there are other tenants in the rest, although at the moment no one pays any rent.”

  They walked up to the third floor. Amelia opened the door and Friedrich let go of her hand and ran into the apartment.

  “Papa, Papa! We’ve brought a friend of yours!” the boy shouted.

  They went into a room lined with bookcases groaning with books. The former tenant must have been a great reader, or else a professor.

  Max was in the shadows, sitting in a chair and covered with a thin blanket.

  Amelia went over to him, kissed him and stroked his head.

  “Max, I’ve found an old friend of ours, Albert James, I’ve got him here.”

  Albert did not understand why Max didn’t get up to greet him, and when his eyes got used to the dark he had to make a great effort for his expression not to give him away. The formerly proud and attractive Baron von Schumann’s face was ruined by scars of burns and shrapnel.

  “Come closer,” Amelia said to Albert.

  “Albert, my dear friend, I’m glad you’re here.” Max reached out his hand without standing up, and Albert saw that he must not be able to see too well, as one of his eyes was half shut and he had a huge scar that stretched across his forehead to his eyelid. “I’m sorry not to get up, please don’t think me rude.”

  “Of course not, I am pleased to see you, Max. Your son’s quite a little man now,” he said, to make conversation.

  “Yes, Friedrich is a dream.”

  Amelia, who had left the room, came back with a tray on which were balanced three cups and a teapot.

  “It’s not the best tea in the world, but it’s all I could get on the black market.”

  They spoke of the Berlin they had known, the evenings they had spent at the Adlon and Professor Schatzhauser’s house, the wicked and cheerful city that it had been in the past. Max made him promise that he would come back again to chat, and Amelia saw him to the door.

  “I’m sorry to see him like this. Where did it happen? On the Russian front?”

  “I did it to him,” Amelia replied.

  Albert looked at her in shock. Amelia was a stranger to him, he couldn’t find any trace in her of the woman he had known. She must have been twenty-seven or twenty-eight at that time, but her eyes showed that she had been through hell. He did not know how to reply to Amelia’s assertion.

  “I know that it might be presumptuous, but is there any way I can help?”

  She thought for a moment before answering.

  “Get them to leave him in peace. The Soviets are arresting people, looking for Nazis everywhere. I don’t know how many committees have examined Max’s file: He has been interrogated, they’ve called for witnesses... They haven’t found anyone who is willing to say that Max is a criminal, not yet. You know that he was not a Nazi, that he went to your uncle to see if there was any way to set aside the policy of appeasement that did nothing apart from support Hitler. If you could get them to leave him in peace...”

  “I will try. Give me the summonses that you’ve received, the papers, whatever you’ve got; I can’t promise anything, this is the Russian sector and they don’t let people stick their noses in their affairs.”

  “Tell me, where do you want me to bring them?”

  He gave her the address of a little hotel in the American sector.

  “I’ll bring them to you tomorrow morning, early.”

  “Excellent. We could have a coffee, how about it?”

  The next morning he saw her walking toward the hotel, her back straight, sunk in her own thoughts. She smiled to see him waiting for her at the hotel door.

  “Are you leaving?”

  “No, I was waiting for you. Come in, the manager makes a good cup of coffee.”

  “Is it authentic?”

  “Yes, I provide it for her,” he said with a laugh.

  She gave him the papers and he asked her to tell him what she had done in the war.

  “I worked for your uncle.”

  “All the time?”

  “All the time apart from when I was in Pawiak and Ravensbrück.”

  “Pawiak? You were arrested in Warsaw?”

  “Yes, that was the first time. I worked with a group of Poles who helped people in the ghetto. We were all arrested. I was lucky, Max saved me from being hanged. I thought that my time in Pawiak had taught me what hell was like, but I was mistaken. The true hell was Ravensbrück, but I didn’t care what they did to me there, I just wanted to die.”

  “Yesterday you told me that what happened to Max was your fault...”

  “Didn’t your uncle tell you?”

  “No, he’s never told me anything about any intelligence operation.”

  “I helped a group in the Greek Resistance. We had to blow up an arms convoy that was heading from Athens up to the Yugoslav border. Max was going that day to inspect a battalion near Athens. He decided to travel with the convoy because the man leading it was a friend of his. I didn’t know. I pressed the detonator just as the car with the officers came past, and I saw him being blown out of his seat and covered in flames. He lost his legs, and you can see how his face ended up, but the rest of his body is worse. In spite of what I did, Max forgave me, he got me out of Ravensbrück after a few months there. He has saved my life on two occasions, and I... I took his life away from him. He spent several months fighting for his life, but he survived. When he saw himself, he said that he would have preferred to have died. He says that to me every day.”

  “He’s a soldier, Amelia, and a doctor. He knew what was happening every day, and what could happen to any one of us.”

  “Are you s
ure? Do you think that any one of us could have been left in that state by the woman he loved?”

  “And you don’t work for Lord Paul anymore?”

  “No, I don’t want to know anything else about the war, about dead people, about the intelligence service. And I couldn’t work for anyone anyway, my whole time is spent with Max, for Max. I owe him, and he needs me.”

  “And the child?”

  “Friedrich is the only person who keeps Max alive. He loves him.”

  “And Baroness Ludovica?”

  “She died in one of the British bombing raids over Berlin. Friedrich survived by a miracle. They only have each other.”

  “They have you.”

  “Oh, I just try to make things easier for them. They have lost everything.”

  “And you feel guilty and have decided to sacrifice the rest of your life to them? What about your family? What about your son?”

  “I have lost Javier for ever. My husband won’t let me come close to the child. My family misses me, I’m sure, but they don’t need me like Max and Friedrich need me.”

  “Do they know that you are here and what you went through?”

  “No, they don’t know, I don’t want them to know, it’s better this way, I’d only make them suffer.”

  “Don’t you think that not knowing anything about you is what might really make them suffer?”

  “Maybe, but I can’t do anything apart from what I’m doing, not for the moment, at least.”

  “Are the Soviets harassing you?”

  “I’ve got good credentials, I was a prisoner of the Nazis twice, in Pawiak in Warsaw, and then in Ravensbrück, what more can they ask for?”

  “You can always show them your membership card for the French Communist Party,” he said with a smile, trying to lighten the tension.

  “Do you think that if I showed it to Walter Ulbricht they’d give me a good job? Or maybe I should try to get an appointment with Wilhelm Pieck? They’re the ones in charge here, as well as the Soviets,” Amelia said, picking up on Albert James’s joke.